“What exactly led you to discover that the bonds had been stolen, Mr. Ridgeway?”

He laughed rather bitterly.

“The thing stared me in the face, Monsieur Poirot. I couldn’t have missed it. My cabin trunk was half out from under the bunk and all scratched and cut about where they’d tried to force the lock.”

“But I understood that it had been opened with a key?”

“That’s so. They tried to force it, but couldn’t. And, in the end, they must have got it unlocked somehow or other.”